New Capital Ships: Intego (Hand), Lucrehulk (Alignment), Torpedo Sphere (Remnant)
As opposed to being a content-oriented release, 1.0F (or 'full') is intended to fix several of the issues in 1.0 before we work on breaking the game again for 1.1 For a more comprehensive overview, see
.
The version for v1.82 is available now, with support for 1.83 coming as soon as possible
Before playing the mod to increase stability, also enable Large Address Aware to bypass Sins' 2GB memory limit issues. LAA is included in the download, simply open it, set the mode to basic, find your Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion.exe file and click the box to enable large address aware, then save. This only needs to be done once, so if you have already done it for other mods you can skip this step.
...Game Days...In order to facilitate multiplayer matches for our players, we'll be doing pre-planned community game nights on predetermined weekends with Ascendancy players and developers. The first of these days will be Saturday May 7th, at 2pm EST and will be hosted on lead developer Corey's personal stream, at
www.hitbox.tv/CoreyLoses . Access for games that day will be first-come-first serve, and depending on how people feel about it it, we'll look at different ways to expand this.
...Reflections & Projections...Even though the last version just released a couple pixels up on this page, we have a pretty clear idea of where we want to head with the mod. The goal with the releases up to 1.0f has been to get solid basis for the
first four factions. One of the most common questions we've received has to do with the identity of the factions represented by the "coming soon" portraits on the faction select screen, and we're proud to announce the identity of the first new faction will be... the first thing we discuss in the development of 1.2.
Faction-wise, 1.1 will deal with finishing off the existing four factions and filling in the blanks left in their tech, structure and unit rosters. This polishing of the Hand, New Republic, Alignment and Remnant will also involve visual reworks for their less aesthetically pleasing ships, like the Dreadnaught and the oft-discussed Bellator. Unfortunately, Robin had work to do in order to make sure he could eat so we were not able to finish the new Bellator for 1.0, but visual updates will be a major part of 1.1.
If the path to 1.0 was setting up the factions within themselves, the main thrust of 1.1 is to work on how they interact. Without getting into too many specifics (there'll be different news posts to detail specific changes), this will involve things like diplomacy, but also trying to work in some of the narrative feel of the Star Wars galaxy. One of the biggest complaints about Ascendancy, especially from Imperial Civil War players, was the lack of a role characters and canon events played in the mod. Most of our work in this area has been saved for 1.1, from canonical map starts and 'militia' forces, to random events pulled from canon, and, yes, heroes.
Another major area of contention are the unit and structure pips with tails and indicators around them. We're still trying to find an effective way to get the necessary information across while reducing some of the visual noise the current setup puts in screen. We would ask that people who question why we would do such a thing instead of just plain silhouettes like base Sins should keep in mind that the silhouettes of ships within Sins factions are very different from those in Star Wars, many of which share entire hulls, let alone similar shapes.
The first major feature added for 1.1 can be found below...
...1.1 Preview: Upkeep...Please note that this is a preview for a feature being included in 1.1, not the 1.0f version available above. Specifics may change between now and release based on testing and feedback.One of the biggest issues which brings down Sins of a Solar Empire is the way the late-game devolves into a tedious slog, where the determining factor of a match is not who has a better fleet, economy or strategy, but instead who gets bored last. Rather than large fleets and empires resulting in a climactic battle or series of key engagements, the end-game would drag on as players could easily accumulate thousands of unusable resources and immediately replace any losses. Their reserves would also be so large as to render most territory losses meaningless. Part of this can be ascribed to income rates, but its also partially the fault of how upkeep is handled; regardless of how many ships you have, once you've upgraded your capacity you're stuck at a flat income cost. You can't make that cost too big either, or players wouldn't be able to afford it and any loss would be impossible to adjust for.
No individual change can fix all of this, however we fhave a new way to handle upkeep which should require a bit more thought for fleet composition, increase the value on individual ships, and significantly change the way late-game engagements are thought about.
Instead of fleet upkeep being based on a flat rate (which remains), there is now an additional component where each individual ship has its own upkeep cost in credits. This is broken into tiers based on different characteristics of the ships, and provides another mechanic with which we can differentiate ships and even factions. This mechanic means that having a fully-capped fleet requires not just saving and spending properly, but having an income which can sustain it long-term. The more ships you have, the less money you have rolling in, and the less effectively you can replace losses you've sustained.
This also provides a sneaky way for us to potentially improve performance. Where before 10 players on a 100 player map could realistically survive and end up with 10 fully-capped fleets, making gameplay slow to a crawl. With these changes, that should be a lot more difficult to accomplish economically, since there are only so many ships that can be supported at once. As players get eliminated, more space gets freed up and remaining players can afford to expand more.
Figure out you're expanding too much, or losing too much territory to sustain your ships, or even just not at war and want to focus output more on infrastructure instead of military? No problem. You can also mothball your ships from any of your frigate or capital shipyards. Mothballing completely deactivates the selected ship, making it a sitting target, however it also removed the upkeep costs associated with keeping it active. This will hopefully provide players on both sides with interesting strategies to take advantage of. There will also be a helpful indicator above the ships, indicating that they are mothballed.
Moreover, this should also make it more viable to engage in hit and run tactics. We want to make infrastructure more valuable to begin with, whether by making it more expensive or take longer to build, but aside from that, previously if you had a smaller fleet you really had no choice but to engage or try to expand your own to take it on at some point. Our first attempt to solve this was buffing smaller fleets with well-trained fleet commanders, but that was not the answer. Now, if you're able to outmaneuver a player with a bigger fleet and chip away at their territory and economy, you can eventually force them to start mothballing or even scuttling their fleet if they want to continue producing anything or taking territory.
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Topic: [Release] Ascendancy 1.0F Released, Reflections & Upkeep Preview (Read 8819 times)